Atax
Platform: Amiga 500
Region: Europe
Media: Floppy
Controller: Mouse / Keyboard, Joystick
Genre: Shoot 'em Up - Top Down - Vertical
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1988
Developer: Unknown
Publisher: Eclipse
Players: 1
Hardware: OCS
Conversions: Atari ST/E
Disks: 1
Programmer: Tony Barker
Musician: Tony Barker
Designer: Tony Barker
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FOR a vertical scrolling alien zapper to make  any waves new it has to have something a bit special. Atax does have a lower price than the average game, but that is about all it has going for it.
 The drab title screen says a lot about the game. On the left, a bland bas-relief score panel occupies
about a third of the screen with info on your score, lives and the name of the current level. A tiny ship
moves around the smooth scrolling backgrounds to the right. Some games have you shooting slimy
creatures, others accost you with fleets of high-tech space craft, but the author of Atax has settled
for something iar more menacing: circles!
Circles of a different kind (glowing this time) float down the screen now and then. These can be
picked up to add drone pods to your ship that follow in your tracks, shooting when you do. The
problem with these is that they often drift down the edge of the screen over deadly scenery where
collecting them is an impossibility.
Control of your ship is very finicky and worsened by the cramped play area. The traditional mega-aliens that usually sit at the ends of levels have been replaced in Atax with far more mundane defences.
Everything is so puny in this game! Your ship is minute, your lasers are nothing but dots and the
aliens rate as some of the weediest ever seen!
When the Amiga was in its early days, these were the kinds of irritants we had to put up with if we
wanted a shoot ‘em up. Things have changed drastically since then and a lot of progress has been made in this area. Sidewinder, for example, retails at a fiver less and wipes the floor with this.
Anyone on the lookout ior a shoot ‘em up of the vertically scrolling variety should either hunt down a copy of Sidewinder or Xenon, or hang around for Outlaw's Shoot ‘em Up Construction Kit, all of which will serve you far better than this.

Amiga User International, January 1989.
